Case study:

Personalised product information for discerning clients

Established for over 30 years, Pentagon Tiles is an importer and distributor of ceramic, mosaic, Italian porcelain and allied tiles.

Dealing with brand consistency

Pentagon Tiles recently opened a new London showroom to be at the heart of the architectural community. With the appointment of a new Managing Director and a new architectural focus, it became glaringly obvious that there were some inconsistencies in the brand identity.

Richard Tucker, Managing Director, explains: “We don’t have enough work or budget to justify employing a graphic designer or artworker and agency fees mount up. Nevertheless, when you’re targeting consumers and architects, these little things make a big difference. We needed a way to keep our branded material consistent and on-point, but using the resources we already have.”

Pentagon Tiles has the resources to amend artwork and print it, but does not have the expertise to produce initial designs. Admin staff were therefore creating product literature using old documents as templates each time something new was required.

Another issue the company faced was the growing demand for bespoke marketing material. “Architects, for example, are only interested in their choice of products and don’t want to leaf through masses of information, so we wanted to respond to an enquiry with a pack containing just the info they asked for.” Richard adds.

Finally, with such an extensive and growing range of products, it was difficult to keep on track with all the new product photography. Images were randomly filed which created difficulties locating the correct picture when they produced product literature.

Pentagon Tiles’ objectives for Libris

Maintain brand control

Enable marketing material to be produced by all staff

Reduce time and cost on briefing and using external agencies

Produce bespoke marketing material quickly and easily

“It wasn’t just the colours, as we use colour to differentiate between our Harlow and London sites, it was little things like font size, spacing and logo positioning. These are all small things that you wouldn’t notice individually but together result in brand dilution”

Richard Tucker.Managing Director at Pentagon Tiles

Introducing Libris to Pentagon Tiles

With an impressive range of up to 800 tile collections, Pentagon Tiles needs to generate a lot of product literature, but doesn’t have the support of an in-house marketing team or budget. When Libris first became available we knew it would be of tremendous value to them.

Benefits of Libris for Pentagon Tiles

Brand consistency on all marketing material

Marketing material can now be confidently produced by all staff

Time savings as literature can be produced in a few clicks

Cost saving as no need to use agencies for initial design work

All product images stored and easily accessible from one place

“The Libris team are really good to work with. You can be completely honest and open with them, knowing they listen and take on board your requirements,” explains Richard. “When I first mentioned some of my concerns over brand consistency and they suggested I had a Libris demo, I was eager to see how it could work for us.

“I instantly saw the value we could gain. Although Libris required an initial modest investment I knew it was the way forward. Imagine having a system that allows all team members to create marketing material that you can print and distribute yourself. No more agency fees and all produced within the right brand templates!”

Making brand consistency easy

Richard continues: “All staff can use the system whenever we have a quiet moment in store. They can produce their own datasheets, business cards, bespoke sample packs and product labels. It’s great – even I use it!

“The best thing is we now have the consistent and personalised brand image this market needs, without having to employ a dedicated team to work on our marketing. Any one of my team can do this.”

One of the functions Pentagon Tiles programmed into the system is ‘smart templates’. These allow the user to change the branding between the London and Harlow office with a simple selection from a drop down menu. This means that any of the team can put together marketing material without needing to think about the brand guidelines.

Richard also describes an example of a recent use of Libris which has given life to old binders: “Recently we discovered a lot of old branded binders in our store room. We had no idea what we could do with them. They had the wrong branding but were still in excellent condition, so we couldn’t just throw them out. Instead we used Libris to create custom front covers. Every time we had a sample request we printed the artwork and heat sealed it over the existing cover. The binders now look great when you stand in front of a prospective client.”

Next steps

Richard adds: “There are so many other things we could use Libris for, but I think we will start by looking at producing new product brochures, taking the datasheet a step further.”